It's exam season, a time that fills me with empathy for students and their parents, particularly because my own schooldays contained more stressful examinations than the Ayia Napa GUM clinic in peak season. Technically my secondary education took place in the 1990s, but really it happened somewhere else, or rather somewhen else. While my future husband was discovering acid house in the verdant fields of Berkshire, I inhabited an arcane Govian dream-world of leather satchels, times tables and anxiety-fuelled achievement: five years' strict instruction over doorstop books, below terrifying nuns. Innumerable mnemonics (which still scatter my brain like landfill), endless exams and zealous religious instruction that included being shown an ultrasound video of an abortion called The Silent Scream. Top set girls were expected to excel; we did as we were told.

It was both as much fun as it sounds and astonishingly effective, in that it made me a straight-A student who joined an indie band and moved to London at the earliest opportunity instead of going to university. I wanted to learn things they couldn't teach me (about power chords, cheap wigs and boys, which were my main areas of study at the time), and I did. We're all autodidacts as far as our emotional lives go, and I don't begrudge having to work the big stuff out for myself. But there were some small lessons my teachers could have added to the syllabus, if only to save me time later. I've included a few here, and updated them for younger readers who are striking out on their own this summer. This is what I wish I'd learned at school.

Education University isn't everything. But it is something. Everyone I know in fancypants media London claims they burned through their time at their alma mater like a packet of Rizlas, but I'm often the only person they know who didn't go.

It's OK to be a nerd If nerds ran the world there would be no wars. Only unconvincing battle re-enactments in meticulously correct period costume.

Love Never date anyone who is rude to waiters. (Knowing this in advance could have prevented the poisoning of five years of my life.)

Style Never buy anything to impress someone you don't know. Never wear a T-shirt with a face on it that's more attractive than yours. If you are ever going to wear a crop top, the time is now.

Socialising All the good bits of a night out happen before 2am. Don't feel the need to stay up any later. Drugs have a terrible rate of return: they make you ugly, boring and ill, in that order. (The legal ones are the worst.) When talking to someone you like, don't be nonchalant. Be complimentary. Everyone likes compliments, except dickheads, and it's usually politic to identify them as quickly as possible.

Art Good art never makes you feel too stupid to understand it, even when you don't.

Friends In the nicest possible way, other people pretty much don't give a shit what you do. Here's a list of some examples of the kinds of things they don't give a shit about: how fat you are, if you are in a relationship, your career prospects, your outfit, what your home looks like. Nobody's keeping score of those things except you (try not to). Avoid people who make a virtue of their unwillingness or inability to edit themselves to spare the feelings of others.

Family If you love them, call them often and tell them so.

The internet Don't use it as a junk drawer for your least interesting thoughts. Never post anything in anger. It makes you look powerless. If you wouldn't get it out on the bus, don't put it up online. Never sleep with anyone who uses more than three hashtags per post. #LOL #bantz #Purebantz #Psychicdeath #Shitinbed.